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FIFA WC 26 - Other Nations LIVE Match Thread ⚽

Cristian Romero scores in the 111th minute in extra time for Argentina to give them a 3-2 lead. Lionel Messi with the assist to add to his goal today.
 
Argentina ran out 3-2 winners over Cape Verde after extra time in their World Cup round of 32 game to advance to the round of 16, where they'll face Egypt after they got the job done 4-2 on penalties over the Socceroos.
 
What frustrates me is that (looking at the opponents in our group) with more astute coaching and an attack-focused game plan, we could've won all 3 matches to finish clear top of our group, if not gone through undefeated. Then in the first round of the knockouts we came up against an Egypt side that (again) with more astute coaching and an attack minded game plan, we could've beaten. It was the best opportunity we've had since 2006 to be talking about the undefeated Socceroos in the World Cup, and right now daring to dream against Argentina.

Instead the opportunity has been squandered under a manager who made the same mistakes he made as an A-League coach. Hoping to defend his way to a goal on the counter. Hoping to defend and run the clock out to victory, or get lucky on penalties. There was a legitimate opportunity to go one better in this tournament with the squad at our disposal and it's been wasted.

We might (hopefully) have a better coach and a squad at or above this level in 2030, but we may not have the same fortune with our opponents. There's every chance we get another group of death, or progress to the knockouts and draw France/ Spain/ Argentina or the 2030 equivalent of those sides...
 
ClockworkOrange said:
The original post was about playing with flair. They have more flair players. They also take better set pieces.🤷‍♂️
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Which then means the system is wrong and needs to be changed. That won't happen with the defensive minded coach

Also says a lot that with a better infrastructure and more money, we can't produce any flair players
 
ClockworkOrange said:
The original post said we should play like CV.
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I think they were alluding more to the fearless and go get it attitude. Not being overawed by who they played, and giving it a go.

You have to play with the players you have, but Popa takes that to a whole new level. Are we really saying we have zero technically gifted attacking players
 
zimbos05 said:
I think they were alluding more to the fearless and go get it attitude. Not being overawed by who they played, and giving it a go.

You have to play with the players you have, but Popa takes that to a whole new level. Are we really saying we have zero technically gifted attacking players
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No, we have some technically gifted players but I’d only classify Volpato and Irakunda as ‘flair’ players. And of course they can only play for 60 minutes… 😉
 
zimbos05 said:
So we're back to, cape verde are better than us which means our system and structure is broken and needs fixing.

Is Popovic the right man to do so? No.
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Only if you consider any team that has flair players as better than any team that doesn’t? Seems to be how you rate teams. A few past German and Italian teams were better than teams with flair players in my view. Obviously we have different opinions on what makes a top team.
 
zimbos05 said:
So we're back to, cape verde are better than us which means our system and structure is broken and needs fixing.

Is Popovic the right man to do so? No.
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Seems that you see one team do well for a few games (while getting no further than us) and all of a sudden we’ve got to change our entire system to play like Cape Verde?
 
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